Watching Tamagawa Taiko (5/6) - Preparing an entrance

The Tamagawa University Taiko drum and dance corps performed for Sakura Sunday 2012 at Fairmount park in Philadelphia, PA. There was a sizable crowd, and almost every image showed the milling crowd. In some images people off stage draw attention almost as effectively as the performers.

 

 

 

Technical trivia

Camera:

Autofocus and JPG necessitated by camera and conditions.

 

Processing

Correct lens distortion (Olympus Master) then use Noise Ninja to clean up images.

(note: this is in addition to blurry automatic noise reduction)

 

Black level enhancement

- Generate a copy

- Use 'curves' tool to set bottom 10% of colors to black (HSV color space, Picture Window Pro)

- Composite with original using soft light transformation at 50% opacity (note: order matters).

 

Observation

This approach also modifies colors in a pleasing (to me) way. Interestingly, photos not available for public viewing are given much higher 'interestingness' rank than comparable public ones with hundreds of views.

Done